Knight Initiative Steering Committee Alumni

Thomas Christian Südhof was born in Göttingen, Germany, on Dec. 22 in 1955, obtained his M.D. and doctoral degrees from the University of Göttingen in 1982. He performed his doctoral thesis work at the Max-Planck-Institut für biophysikalische Chemie in Göttingen with Prof. Victor P. Whittaker on the biophysical structure of secretory granules. From 1983-1986, Südhof trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Drs. Mike Brown and Joe Goldstein at UT Southwestern in Dallas, TX, and elucidated the structure, expression and cholesterol-dependent regulation of the LDL receptor gene.

Dr. Sylvia K. Plevritis is the William M. Hume Professor in the School of Medicine, Professor of Biomedical Data Science and of Radiology and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University. She leads a systems biology cancer research program that bridges multiomic, imaging, clinical and population data to decipher properties of cancer progression and drug response. Dr. Plevritis received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and M.S.

Bill Newsome is the Harman Family Provostial Professor of Neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and the Founding Director of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. He received a B.S. degree in physics from Stetson University and a Ph.D. in biology from the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Newsome is a leading investigator in systems and cognitive neuroscience. He has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying visual perception and simple forms of decision making.

Karl Deisseroth is the D.H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard, his PhD from Stanford, and his MD from Stanford. He also completed postdoctoral training, medical internship, and adult psychiatry residency at Stanford, and he is board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.

As the inaugural Associate Director, Dr. Hussain designed and developed new initiatives and oversaw program operations that support the mission of the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience. In her leadership role, Natasha facilitated community and research to advance discoveries that support human brain function, health, and longevity. Prior to joining the Knight Initiative, Natasha was the scientific director of the Johns Hopkins Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute focused on fostering transdisciplinary research among neuroscientists, engineers and data scientists.